[Gratitude Guest Bloggers]

One day I was roaming my SIM and I had someone show up that really surprised me.  I built my 1st sim for just me and wanted to see what I could do or how I could expand my RL business by using SL.  This person, a well known and very caring person had been someone I had admired for some time spent a good part of the day looking at the things I had created.  Mind you I had only been in game for a couple of months by now and though I loved to create, had studied graphics arts as my undergrad, I was pretty taken that this person liked my build and said he saw potential.

About a month later he IM'd me again and ask if I would be interested in building a sim for him.  Since he knew a lot of people in SL, I thought this would be a great opportunity to challenge myself while doing something I loved for real money.

I then set out to create the Bangkok Island sim which later sold and has since gone offline but at the time, his energy and thoughtfulness combined with the knowledge he shared with me made SL a completely different experience.

He is still one of my best friends in RL and I have had many opportunities to do other business outside of SL as well getting to know him and his fantastic family.  In fact many of my best RL friends I have met in SL.

[New Premium Membership Features]

How do merchants get into the system if they want to provide gifts?

[Join the Second Life Advertising Beta!]

Over the course of your lifetime, your value to advertiser is near $500,000.  That means that advertisers have paid over a half million dollars to reach you with their message. If it was just a money grubbing attempt that these highly sophisticated companies fell for, don't you think that industry would have died like 40 years ago?

The truth is, advertising works. SL has very little available for advertising your goods and it needs more. I commend this effort as I want any tool available to promote my products, even if I choose not to use them.

[Viewer 2.3 Beta Available Today With Display Names and More]

NO LOCAL LIGHTING!!  ARE YOU E'FFING KIDDING??????? I'VE SPENT 4 YEARS BUILDING A LIGHTING BUSINESS THAT DEPENDS HEAVILY ON LOCAL LIGHTING!! More proof of how effing stupid the lab is.

Your lighting system is crap to start with. No directional lighting, no light maps, no ability to shape cones. Every game platform I've ever built in has a vast choice of lighting schemes but not Second Life, we have the ability change our names. OMFG!

 

[Viewer 2.3 Beta Available Today With Display Names and More]

I'm glad to see that I am not the only one who thinks this is a complete waste of time and resources when more important things are still not addressed. 

[Viewer 2.2 Beta has Arrived!]

What may be so entertaining about this is that other then the 57 who have replied here, no one else except new residents who don't know any better, cares. The new features as spelled out prevously are a good sign forward and show that though the lab had their heads up their (____) building the 2.0, they at least paid attention to their mistakes and have moved to correct them.

I'm sorry, I simply cannot commend you for releasing a piece of garbage and then fixing part of it.

Anytime you add steps to a process rather then remove them, you will have issues. Add to that an entirely new UI with little attention to intuitive logic, and you have Windows Vista. But at the lab knows more than we petty users right? More steps to a process must make it better becuse more is better right?

Yes, viewer two does allow for some amazing new features most of which where way overdue. 2.2 is much faster while Phoenix has taken these features and trounced the Linden Lab Viewer. Hurray to the new features and kudos for Phoenix using them in an interface we can understand and use with less steps.

And yes my dear friend Vyrl, the sidebar is very annoying.

[Next Steps for Mesh Import]

I like the idea as this is how pros do it however, any rookie with a free Wings download is going to be using this.

I  would like to know more about how they will manage poly counts. The current 'prim" limited building model with 10M max prims ads polly's to our builds (senseless profit scheme IMHO) .  What happens when some noob dumps a 5 million polly map into a sim? Then when everyone is wondering why their graphics cards keep crashing they just blame Linden Labs for the lag. If you've ever visited Blue Mars you would see first hand the joy of heavy polly lag. If they really want to advance our build, get rid of that ridiculous 10M prim limit.

Seems every new feature added recently, though creating new abilities and making for some amazing content, adds lag and kills processors.

Fact is Linden Labs builds a game platform and not a game. They know little about building a game, they are just platform builders. I get a terrifying shiver down my spine every time I hear Philip say "wouldn't it be cool if..."

[Introducing Kim Salzer, Our New VP Marketing]

I would think that having some direction as to what Second Life wants to be when they grow up, or Phillip knowing what he wants to do when he grows up would be a big plus for all of us.  As our company along with many other professional marketing firms (River Runs Red, Millions of Us, Electric Sheep, to name a few) have long since pulled out of Second Life due to the fact that we have no idea what clients to bring in or how to position them.

Most of my clients as with most of their's have long since decided that there is no direction and have since opted for other forms of marketing for their products and services.

Hopefully you will bring this to the table and your experience with Blizzard, the best marketed games in the world, will offer some guidance for the Lab that will be well received without too much of Philip's warm and fuzzy "isn't this cool" approach to business.

Also as a side note, take Callie Cline up on her offer. She's one of my best friends and she never offers that to me